At last, fans can rejoice that they seemingly have the Everton of old back, as a team willing to fight for every result and go down trying if things don’t go their way.
It has been a miraculous turnaround from the darker days posted under both Rafa Benitez and Frank Lampard, but a plan was seemingly always in place once they appointed a successor to the latter.
Sean Dyche was a man who almost always seemed destined to enter the Goodison Park dugout, with his ideals surrounding work ethic and effort over talent aligning well with the David Moyes philosophy that shaped the modern-day Toffees.
However, the long-term success he sought to earn would have only been possible by avoiding the drop, which they did in a dramatic final-day showdown with AFC Bournemouth last season.
They are now reaping those rewards, with last night’s win over Burnley a fine indication of that progress.
And yet, it was seemingly his half-time team talk that helped maintain focus to see out a comfortable 3-0 win, with the Liverpool ECHO relaying his comments that explain exactly how he has engineered not just that result, but the club’s resurgence.
The 52-year-old noted: ‘We just went a little bit soft on the game, I thought, and then half-time we corrected it as a unit and I thought we played very well, very strong in the second half and came out worthy winners.’
Then, when asked what he said to spur on his players, he added: ‘I thought we had to play forwards more, we had to be more physical with our presence, and just really remind ourselves of the hard yards of the game because I have always believed there is quality here and doing the hard yards, the ugly side, [having] the shape, the desire, to take on a game, and I thought it flooded back into the team in the second half. I thought it was a very strong half.’
How good have Everton been under Sean Dyche?
Whilst his Everton side may have come under criticism for their poor start to the season, the former Clarets man, who spent ten impressive years at Turf Moor, remained confident that things would turn around.
He would continuously point to the underlying numbers, and has since been proven right as last night marked their fifth win in their last seven games across all competitions, even rectifying their home form too.
As such, his points-per-match figure has risen dramatically, with the 1.29 now enough to merit 49 points across an entire 38-game Premier League season, typically more than enough for safety.
Referencing those aforementioned underlying figures, and still there seems more to come from the Toffees, who have scored just ten league goals from an expected goals tally of 18.39.
Dyche’s work in turning around this sinking ship has been nothing short of revolutionary, and his inspirational words at yesterday’s halftime only emphasise this further. Even his substitutions shone against Burnley, with Beto’s unorthodox cameo drawing praise and confusion in equal measure.
An intelligent and passionate tactician with a philosophy Evertonians can get behind, at last it seems the club is back on track.
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